Iran, nuclear

September 29, 2009

I remain baffled why, while discussing Iran's nuclear ambitions and its grave consequences, the West is not even willing to consider the already present and clear danger emanating out of Pakistan or any other nuclear armed state, including India.

Barely four days after I wrote the latest post on nuclear double standards I am prompted to write this one after reading a report this morning in The New York Times about a difference of opinion among US, Israeli and German intelligence agencies over the extent of Tehran's actual capability. According to the newspaper, the Israelis believe Tehran is close to building a nuclear weapon, the Germans say weapons development was never halted and the Americans say that the work was halted in 2003 and it has probably not been resumed.

My point is somewhat different. If the motivating fear driving the West's objection to Iran's nuclear program is its political/religious establishment's deep links with Islamic terror groups, then the same logic should have the rest of the world going crazy over Pakistan's already established nuclear weapons program. In no other country the dividing lines between the military, intelligence, and Islamic insurgents are as indistinguishable as they seem in Pakistan. There have also been longstanding suggestions that the US may take control of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal since it is vulnerable to the Taliban-Al-Qaeda combine.

Also, people forget that barely 1,993 km or 1,238 miles separate Tehran and Islamabad, not a lot of ground to cover once a nuclear weapons program has been well established. So the danger of nuclear weapons falling into terrorists' hands is not necessarily less or manageable in Islamabad than Tehran.

The nuclear genie escaped when the first nuclear weapon was built. The only way it can be brought back is if the entire world decides to destroy them together without exception. Anything else before that is merely posturing.

September 25, 2009

I hold no brief for Iran or its nuclear program but I find it hard to reconcile the flagrant double standards that Barack Obama, Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy displayed while accusing Tehran of "serial deception."

Speaking on the sidelines of G20 meeting in Pittsburgh, Obama said that Iran's nuclear program "represents a direct challenge to the basic foundation of the nonproliferation regime."

Not to be outdone in hyperbole Brown thundered, "The level of deception by the Iranian government, and the scale of what we believe is the breach of international commitments, will shock and anger the entire international community."

And Sarkozy stripped his response of any rhetorical flourish and said Tehran had two months to comply or be prepared to face international sanctions.

All this is very impressive and swift. The only problem is that it is so manifestly hypocritical. If the underlying principle is that Iran is a sponsor of international terror and cannot be trusted to develop nuclear weapons, then the three men need not go much further than Iran's immediate eastern neighbor Pakistan. Not only has Pakistan been terror central for about two decades, it has been so for more than half of that period with nuclear weapons. I do not remember anyone in Washington, London, or Paris standing up and telling Islamabad to cease and desist or else.

If anything Pakistan has brilliantly used its geostrategic location both as home to and progenitor of the brand of violent religious campaign the West condemns with such force in Iran. And Iran has not even developed a single nuclear weapon yet. No one doubts that Tehran wants nuclear capability and wants it yesterday. No one also doubts that married with its state patronage of some questionable terror groups the future nuclear weapons could be a potentially serious global threat. The point is all of this has already been true of Pakistan for a while. All the benchmarks that the West believes Iran would soon attain to become a serious threat were perfected by Pakistan sometime ago. None of that has prevented Washington from cultivating and using Pakistan in its war on terror at prohibitive costs in blood and treasure.

I personally believe even one weapon, nuclear or conventional, is one too many in anybody's hands. But since that is an idiotic position to take in the current context, the least we could do is conduct ourselves with some basic rectitude and fairness. For Obama to argue that Iran's secret program "represents a direct challenge to the basic foundation of the nonproliferation regime" is disingenuous because the existence of a single nuclear weapon, let alone thousands, represents an equally direct challenge to non-proliferation. Nuclear disarmament by its very nature has to be total and global. Anything short of that is chicanery. In any other form it serves no purpose whatsoever. It is like pregnancy. One can never be slightly pregnant.